Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
In 1789 the founding fathers had to get 13 colonies agree to a constitution. Popular vote would mean Virginia and New York would dominate the new country. The smaller colonies would not agree to such domination so would not join the Union. So a house based on population and a senate where each state has two votes was the compromise. The electoral college is 538 votes, the exact number of members of Congress.

This insures the minority has a voice. It's the same today and it will never change since it would take 38 states to ratify a change. So forget it and move on to other things.
This is all well and good mickeycrimm. I like that we have two separate houses, one that yields a little more power to the small states or populations. I think that is fair.

But the electoral college is something different. I get that the number is derived from the combination number of house and senate representative. But here is the thing. Doesn't the term democracy have some relationship to majority, when picking a leader?

We have now had 2 elections in the last 6 that the person that received the most votes did not win? And a third in 2020, that despite a pretty overwhelming majority of 7 million, the election was only a few thousnad votes from doing so.

So is that really democracy? The person will the most votes routinely doesn't win now? It reminds me of South Africa where a very minority group managed to cling to power for much longer than they should have.

Now you are correct that the remedy, 38 states is not going to happen. especially in this climate. But mark my words, there will be a point that it flows the other way. the Democrats will narrowly win a few large states and all those electoral votes, while the Republicans win more widely win many more states and the popular vote, but lose the electoral college. If Texas ever flips blue as predicted (for a while now), watch out. this scenario becomes likely.

But guess what, it still wont get fixed because then the democrats won't want to. In the meantime we have election after election that a very small number of people in about 6-7 mostly small-ish states decide the election. 90% of the people in this country, inclduing yourself in Montana, really don't need to bother voting. It isn't going to mean anything. the only votes that count are Joe Smoe and Nancy smith, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The founding fathers deliberately avoided setting up a democracy and went with a constitutional republic. You need to remove the word democracy from your vocabulary. It does not apply to the United States.

Presidential elections are decided by all 50 states. Remove cali or ny from Biden’s electoral count and he would have lost.